Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/463

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Torn away from her native village the young girl gets bitterly homesick:—

When the young girl marries, her life is often spoiled by the father-in-law and mother-in-law, whose obduracy and cruelty are constantly complained of in the songs; the misery of the married woman is also one of the main topics of old poetry. The young woman is often made to suffer at the hands of all the members of her husband's family. So it is that in one chastushka the married woman warns young girls against marriage:—

One finds a very rich collection of satirical and humorous chastushki touching on very different subjects, but in these also it is the lovers that are the most frequently the butt of the satire or of the humour:—

Many songs ridicule dandiness and lavishness. It is particularly the factory worker who has come home to the village on a holiday who is made a laughing-stock of in these songs:—